


Happiness is not always just a dream

by TurkishDelightsHaveViolentEnds



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Artist Grantaire, Background Les Amis de l'ABC, Do You Permit It?, Drinking, Enjolras Has Feelings, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, Excessive Drinking, Fluff, Grantaire & Éponine Thénardier Friendship, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Les Amis de l'ABC - Freeform, Les Amis de l'ABC Shenanigans, Lots and lots of Pining, Multi, OT3, Oblivious Grantaire, Pining, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, artstudent!Grantaire, at this point i just ship grantaire with happiness, gavroche and azelma master the puppy dog look those little bastards, grantaire is the pining king, lots of metaphores with greek mithology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-07-22 08:32:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7427674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TurkishDelightsHaveViolentEnds/pseuds/TurkishDelightsHaveViolentEnds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wanted to paint ON them. He wanted to stretch them out on a bed and use their skin as a canvas. He wanted to dip his hands in tempera and extend them through the expanse of their backs. </p>
<p>He wanted to take everything he saw in them and throw it in the face of the world like a calming breath of fresh air and a breathtaking earthquake all at once, so the universe could see the cosmic souls they were missing out.</p>
<p>But he was just a mortal who had dreamed himself worthy of that level of attention on their part, and they were divine gods to far on their Olympus for him to reach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happiness is not always just a dream

**Author's Note:**

> Also on tumblr: Check out the photosets and aesthetics that are companions to this piece of writing at http://turkishdelightshaveviolentends.tumblr.com/tagged/my-work
> 
> Sorry if there's any grammar mistakes, since english is not my first language. Hope you like it and feel free to point out whatever flows your boat!

Grantaire drinks too much for his own good, or that’s what everyone says. But he knows that if not for alcohol, the warm feeling of drunkness filling his senses like pigments floating in water, he would’ve been a lot worse or even dead by now. Because he’s a dark cynic -no, scratch that. He talks like a cynic, behaves like a cynic and exhales tragedy and pesimism to almost everyone who tries to approach him, to get in. But deep down, under those layers of sarcasm, negative words and charcoal, Grantaire is nothing more that a lonely boy to whom the world wronged too soon. 

 

When wine gets to his head and his brain goes numb, he feels like he can rest for a moment and forget it’s just fear what really doesn’t let him face the world without a bottle between his fingers and annoying words hanging from his mouth. It’s fear of having something and loosing it. Fear of admitting he believes on a cause, on someone, to seconds later see them crumble down to ruins and ashes. Because Grantaire sees things even when he’s so drunk he can’t see straight. He sees everything beautiful in this world and can’t stand the idea of it being destroyed one day. So he drinks and drinks and drinks and never says a thing about what he really feels. Watching from afar, he decides one day, is easier than living it if later you’re gonna loose it all. 

 

When wine is not enough to hide his terrified soul, and it’s never enough, he paints. Because if there’s something that helps him more than alcohol could ever do, is art. 

 

He paints over everything everyminute of his days. He doodles tiny masterpieces on paper tablecloths, explosions of colour on streetlights and walls, paints landscapes over the fridge on his apartment, on newspapers, books, mirrors, canvas and sometimes even the floor. Once he even tried, as if in a trance, to paint the upper part of a laptop in front of him on cafè Musain, because he had seen something there, something gorgeous that had to be drawn for the rest of the world to see and he couldn’t stop himself. The owner of the laptop, some Political Sciences undergraduate on finals week, screamed at him with a fire and a passion he had never seen before but the snarky remark coating an apology died on his lips when Grantaire looked up. If there was a religion that praised the golden god shinning before him, considered him instantly devoted to it and to him. “It has to be a hallucination”, he thougth, some delusional product caused by alcohol, because it was not possible that a person so gorgeous and with such a divine light illuminating him all over could exist. The golden boy looked like the sun itself, like Apollo, and Grantaire was lost the moment he saw him. 

 

His god, as he learned later, was called Ènjolras. Apart from being just plain marvellous he commanded a rebellious group of students who wanted to bring glory and equality to France, and he was wellcomed to join them into the fight for freedom every tuesday and friday at Cafè Musain, or so it said on the panflet that the boy gave to him before leaving the bar along the lines of “All help to the cause is welcomed”; or something similar. Grantaire was just too blinded by his beauty and charisma to even think properly, less alone talk. 

 

So he went and listened and drew thousands of faces that looked like his Apollo but not quite, never content with the results because being so goddam beautiful had to be illegal if he couldn’t translate said beauty into paintings. He went and mixed with the group of friends and drank and talked sometimes a bit too much and a bit too cynically (even said things he really didn’t believed as true). But he couldn’t stop himself if everytime he said something Apollo was going to be there looking at him with fire in his eyes, paying him attention.

 

He went and observed and learned them, but never let anyone in. “Never” lasted until he met Eponine. 

 

The girl worked as a waitress on the Musain and knew the bad things of life, the really bad horrible things, but fighted with everything she had to get away from it all and get her brother and sister out of it too. She wanted to be a journalist, and fucking hell she was going to explode like a brilliant supernova when she got there. Èponine had street smarts and a wicked glint in her dark eyes. She was extremely intelligent and hillarious. He had never laughed so hard with anyone in his life, he had cried of mirth on several times while speaking with her, and he hadn’t even drink anything on those days.

 

Èponine cared for him, truly cared, and Grantaire knew as much. She payed him regular visits with noodles and healthy filled sandwiches from the store around the corner when he spent two days or more without leaving his house because he was engrossed on a project and had forgotten to eat, she realized when something was off but knew well not to ask until he wanted to talk and instead took his hand and kissed his cheek, they called eachother at night when one of them couldn’t sleep or to tell him about the movie she was watching on her tiny secondhand tv. And when she thougth he had drank enough, she substituted the whiskey by cold very infussed tea. Grantaire pretended to not have a clue about it and drank the cold beverage, smiling grateful when she looked away, his heart skipping a beat and a warm feeling in his chest that had nothing to do with alcohol. 

 

After Èponine more people came into his life in a whirlwind of colour, memories and friendly jokes, until he started feeling he belonged in what the group called Les Amis de l'ABC. 

 

Courfeyrac danced and sang out of tune like crazy with him, Ferre lent him every book he wanted, and Jehan wrote poems about each of his paintings as he turned the poet’s words into images. Joly gave him medicines for free when he was sick, Chetta stocked his fridge with leftovers from the bistro she worked at and sometimes tupperwares with her own recipes because “hell no, mon cherri, you’re gonna eat properly while I’m around you hear me?”; and Bossuet played boardgames with him eventhought he was the person with the worst luck Grantaire had ever met. Feuilly always asked him if he wanted to go to the cinema with him to watch independent polish movies, Bahorel taught him some kapoeira moves to get fit and relax himself, and Marius and Cosette laughed whole-heartedly, red in their cheeks, with every joke at their love expense, and gave him a handmade sweater, scarf and hat for Christmas Eve.

 

And then…well, then there was Ènjolras. He prefered not to talk about it. One day his Apollo would see him (truly see him) and not just that image of a hopeless cynic he had of him, but the charming boy never really gave up on him, and as time passed Ènjolras grew accustomed to him and even started to meet up with him and Èponine outside the rallies and meetings, and that was something wasn’t it? 

 

For the first time in a long time, Grantaire had a family. And as everyone started to call him R, he began to sign his artworks with that single letter. 

 

One day he woke up, Eponine, Gavroche and Azelma tangled up between his bed and a giant air matress after a late afternoon of disney movies and helping the kids with the school homework (he loved those tiny bastards, he couldn’t help but spoil them), and realized how much his crappy bedroom had changed. Before meeting all of them his apartment was all dedicated to his art studio, and stil was, but the space in which he had thrown just a shitty matress and a couple of blankets surrounded by books and art supplies -because he didn’t thought he deserved more- now looked as if a hurricane of happiness had ordered his life and put him on the right path. 

 

The white walls were covered with photographies of les amis and the girls, drawings of the kids and material memories of the days with them. A flowercrown made by Jehan, tickets for a music festival he went with them, the round lapel pin with the french flag they wore on the rallies…

 

Gosh! He could keep going on and on about the treasures hanging on the walls. But he wanted breakfast (those french toasts Chetta bought yesterday were calling him) and he needed to take a piss. 

 

When Eponine arised, his old green flannel and baggy shorts hugging her lithe frame, a groggy expression on her sleepy face, Grantaire dropped the beer can he was about to crack open and filled two cups of coffee. Suddenly he didn’t need alcohol to face the day ahead. 

 

On the afternoon, he didn’t really know how, everyone ended up crashing in his apartment for dinner. At that, Graintare smiled so much his face hurted. They laughed and ate and embarrased Marius a little bit and it was perfect. 

And as he watched them, content and full like lizards in the sun, his eyes wandered towards the right end of the sofa. Eponine was telling a crazy story about her parents impersonating a japanese emperor and his geisha to sneak in a richman’s party and how they got caught and ended up falling on a fountain. Ènjolras was by her side shaking his head in disapproval but half smiling, but when she stook out her tongue and messed his golden halo of a hair playfully he actually laughed a little. 

 

Sweet heavens, he wanted to paint them. No, not paint them but paint ON them. He wanted to stretch them out on a bed and use their skin as a canvas. He wanted to dip his hands in tempera and extend them through the expanse of their backs. He wanted to take his watercolours and draw constellations and starry skies engulfing in wonder vast woods over Eponine’s body, wolfs running up her legs and hauling to the alluring moon the girl was, pomegranates and mineral rocks sparkling over her chest like Persephone’s jewels, queen of the underworld.

 

He wanted to draw golden leaves and scorching sunrises on Ènjolras’ stomach and pectorals, rubies and fire down his arms illuminating the world, he wanted to paint all over him the future days of the new tomorrow he rambled so much about, the light of a phoenix flying free above yellowish clouds like a reincarnation of Apollo. 

 

He wanted to take everything he saw in them and throw it in the face of the world like a calming breath of fresh air and a breathtaking earthquake all at once, so the universe could see the cosmic souls they were missing out.

But he was just a mortal who had dreamed himself worthy of that level of attention on their part, and they were divine gods to far on their Olympus for him to reach. 

 

Later, their friends started to leave and returned to their homes. Gavroche and Azelma, thanks to perfectionated pouts and puppy eyes, went with Courfeyrac and Combeferre “please, please, ‘Ponine, you said next time we could do a sleepover at uncles Ferre and Courf’s if they let us to”.

 

But his goddess of the night stayed on his couch looking at one of his scketches folders and eating tangerines like a cat who had found its place to rest, and Apollo lingered nervous -the others throwing him conspirational winks Grantaire didn’t understand- and mumbled something about his laptop lid needing a R makeover because it looked boring. 

 

Grantaire smiled wider, wider than ever in his life, and set himself to work. When he finished, an image of young people raising a red flag over a barricade on the june rebellion of 1832 singed at them to fight for freedom. The group looked misteriously like les amis, and for him it couldn’t have been other way. 

 

The trio drank the remainings of the cold tomato soup Muschietta had prepared that night, looking at the laptop lid, and laughing together about how the ginger student looked like he was having a hard time striking a pose over the unstable barricade, and how that was so shamelessly Marius. Tired and relaxed after a bubbly day, they slowly formed a nest of limbs around eachother on the old couch.

 

Grantaire was in the middle trying not to die of a heartattack, Eponine’s brown-sugar legs were layed out over the boys’ laps, her head on R’s shoulder and her nimble fingers playing with Apollo’s blonde curls behind Grantaire’s nape, the other hand caressing the painter’s wrist.

 

Ènjolras’ temple soon found its place on the strange warmth of R’s other shoulder and layed his hands over the girl’s knees close to Grantaire’s.

 

With trembling whispers and dried out tongue, afraid of waking up and finding it was just another delusion of his overcreative mind, Grantaire extended his fingers and asked “do you permit it?”

 

The words sounded dumb and antiquated on his mind, but something twinkled in Ènjolras eyes and he carefully joined their hands as they moved them to clasp Eponine’s too.

 

The first to make a move was Eponine, of course -Valiant straightforward Eponine-, and everything just unfolded from there.

 

That night R finally understood he was worth of something good, a troathy ecstatic laugh flourishing from his mouth. And as their lips painted down his neck everything beautiful they saw in him, Grantaire realized that happiness in life wasn’t always made of dreams, eventhought sometimes it felt like one.


End file.
